This is going to be a fairly long quote, so,you may want to settle in with a cuppa, whatever’s warm and delicious.
“These day , I own five
sets of encyclopedias from various
eras. None of them ever breathed
a word about the fact that this humming, aromatic, acid flashback, pungent, tingly fingered world is acted out differently for each one of us by the puppet theatre of our senses.
Encyclopedias contain no helpful entries on conducting life’s business while the ruckus in your skull keeps competing for your attention; or on the tyranny of the word NORMAL — its merciless sway over those of us bedeviled and obsessed, hopeless at school dances, repelled by mothers’ suffocating hugs, yet entranced by foul-smelling chemistry experiments, or eager to pass sleepless nights seeking rhymes for ‘misspent’ and ‘grimace’.
Complaints about you are already filtering in. You’re not big on eye contact or smiling.
You prefer to play by yourself. You pitch fits.
Last week you refused to cut out and paste paper shapes with the rest of the kids.
You told the kindergarten teacher you were going to howl like a wolf instead, which you did til they hauled you off to the principal’s office. Ah, the undomesticated smell of open rebellion! Your troublesome legacy, and maybe part of your charm, is to shine too hotly and brightly at times, to be lost in the maze of your sensations, to have trouble switching gears, to be socially clueless, to love books as living things, and therefor to be much alone.
Martin Luther
believed we human beings contain the “inpoured grace of god,” as though grace were lemonade, and we are tumblers full of it. Is grace what we hold in without spilling a drop, or is it an outflooding, a gush of messy befuddling loves?
Grievances and disagreements:
can they lead the way to grace? If our thoughts and feelings were soup or stew, would they taste of bile when we’re defeated and be flavored faintly with grace on better days ? I await the time and place when you can tell me, little butter pear, screeching monkey mind, wolf cub, curious furrow browed mammal what you think of all this.
Til then, your bookish old aunt sends you this missive, a fumbling word of encouragement, a cockeyed letter of welcome to the hallowed ranks of the nerds, nailed up nowhere, and never sent, this written kiss.”
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This poem was titled:” For My Niece Sidney, Age Six.”
by AMY GERSTLER., from American Poetry Review, 2006.
I have a priceless small book stand from the 1950’s right next to my computer desk. A few of my children and grandchildren were here over the weekend, creating wonderful order in my apartment and they left that book, “The Best American Poetry, 2006” right on top of the book stand.
Things will find their way to the surface! Accidents? Who knows.
with love, Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette